Westerly Elementary School Closing Jan. 30-31

The following, email sent January 29 to parents/guardians of Bay Village Schools students, explains why we decided to close Westerly Elementary School Thursday and Friday, January 30 and 31.

UPDATE 1/29/20: Extra staff will be assigned for thorough cleaning/sanitizing at Normandy Elementary, due to the young age of students (although absence levels at Normandy have not increased to a level of concern and Normandy remains open). In addition, the professional contractor that is sanitizing Westerly will treat the Normandy building on Saturday with a fogging disinfection system. The fogging system is also being used in our buses. This treatment uses anEPA-registered hospital disinfectant and NSF registered, no-rinse required food contact surfaces sanitizer.

We are sending you the following email that was sent to Westerly
Elementary School parents/guardians. Westerly Elementary has experienced
an increasingly high rate of absence that we have not seen at our other
school buildings. While we are closing Westerly for the remainder of this week, our other buildings will remain open.
We will continue to monitor each building situation individually and,
of course, we will continue to exercise diligence in cleaning and
sanitizing our buildings and encouraging parents and students to use
health practices known to prevent the spread of illness.

Dear Parent/Guardians of Westerly Elementary students –

Due to significantly higher than normal rates of student absences at
Westerly Elementary School, we will close Westerly for the two remaining
school days this week: Thursday and Friday, January 30 and 31, 2020.

We are exercising an abundance of caution in this decision because
the absences at Westerly have continued to increase throughout this
week.

We realize that closing school is an inconvenience for many of our
families, and we are giving this early notification to help you plan
your work and childcare arrangements.

The building will be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized by a
professional cleaning company to augment the hard work being done by our
maintenance and custodial staff. The closing will allow students who
are ill extra time to recover without falling behind in school work.

Our other buildings have not experienced similar absence rates and
will remain open. Thank you for your understanding and support as we
wait for this unusual situation to pass.